How I Remote Taught (Part 1 - We Have to Do What?!)

I'm not even sure where to start... the last time I posted on this blog was in August, and I was just about to start my 23rd year of teaching.

This year I taught 3 Honors Precalculus classes and 2 General Math 3 classes, and things were going great until about March 9 when the rumblings about a virus spreading around the world started getting serious. We had a faculty meeting before school on March 11 to talk about what could happen in the near future. School might close for a bit, we might have to try something else, etc.  Honestly, I didn't think that anything would seriously happen but it was an interesting couple of days thinking about the possibilities.

And then around 3:00 on March 12, Ohio's Governor Mike DeWine announced that all K-12 schools would be closed for 3 weeks starting on March 17. (What?!)  These weeks happened to butt up with our scheduled spring break, so I wouldn't be going back until April 14. We were about to be out of school for a month!

And that was crazy.

And then the closure was extended until May 1.

And then we were closed until next fall.  That is, the buildings were. But the learning continued.

In my district we were given the first week to regroup and get stuff together. Week 2 was considered a "practice" week and week 3 was "implementation" week. None of it was to be graded.  The hope was (at least for me) that this would be it and we'd be back in the building to finish the year after spring break.

I am lucky. I was still working, my husband was still working, and my kids (7th grade and 10th grade) are pretty self-sufficient. So our income isn't affected and I have had plenty of time at home to work on my school work (with the occasional interruption of "Mom, how do you do this?"). But I know that isn't the norm.

What happens in the fall is still up in the air, so I wanted to take some time to document (for myself, mostly) what I did this quarter and how online (or blended) learning could look for me in the fall.

So that'll be my next several posts.
Part 4 - My Content
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